Local Thunk Didn't Play Any Roguelike Games During Balatro's Development...Except Slay the Spire

Balatro developer Local Thunk recently shared a fascinating development history on their personal blog, revealing a surprising approach to roguelike game design. Despite creating a deck-building roguelike, Thunk admits to intentionally avoiding most roguelike games during Balatro's development—except for one.

Their blog details a conscious decision, starting in December 2021, to limit roguelike gameplay. Thunk explains this wasn't about creating a better game, but rather about prioritizing the inherent fun of the development process itself. Experimentation and reinventing the wheel were key, even if it meant potentially sacrificing a more polished final product. The goal was to embrace the creative journey, rather than simply replicating existing successful designs.

However, this self-imposed restriction was broken just once, a year and a half later, with the discovery of Slay the Spire. Thunk describes the experience as revelatory, acknowledging Slay the Spire's superior design and expressing relief at having avoided it earlier to prevent unintentional copying. The game was initially played only to research controller input handling for a card game, but its captivating gameplay quickly drew Thunk in.

The post-mortem also includes several interesting anecdotes. The project's initial working folder was named "CardGame" and remained unchanged throughout development, and the game's working title was "Joker Poker" for a significant period. Several scrapped features are detailed, including: a system where card upgrades were the sole means of character progression (similar to Super Auto Pets), a separate currency for rerolls, and a "golden seal" mechanic allowing replayed cards to return to the player's hand.

The final number of Jokers (150) is revealed to be the result of a miscommunication with publisher Playstack, where an initial proposal of 120 Jokers was later discussed as 150, a number Thunk ultimately preferred.

Finally, the blog reveals the origin of the developer name "Local Thunk," a humorous reference stemming from a conversation about variable naming conventions in the R programming language.

Thunk's detailed post-mortem offers valuable insights into Balatro's creation. It's a compelling read for anyone interested in game development or the unique journey behind the creation of this 9/10 IGN-rated deck-builder, described as "A deck-builder of endlessly satisfying proportions…the sort of fun that threatens to derail whole weekend plans…" The full blog post can be found here [ttpp].